I have been toying around with GSM modems for some time – working on the Rotary Cellphone project, i settled on the SIM900-module from SIMCOM.

Early in my quest, i mistakenly read, that the SIM900 was Quad band, and the SIM900A was Dual band. As I decided that i did not need the Quad-band capability, i ordered the SIM900A-modem, as it was a few $ cheaper.

Ordering the first module from far east (AliExpress) my choice was the SIM900A model. I milled a breakout-board for the GSM-module, soldered it on, and everything “seemed” to work, but i could not register the modem on the Danish GSM-network. It acted like it was locked to a specific GSM-vendor.

The modem being brand new, ruled out the option that someone else had a go at it, so what was happening ?

I trawled the documentation at SIMCOM, and couldn’t readily find any information on what the differences between a SIM900 and a SIM900A-model were.

Some helpful people at the local Hackerspace mailing-list soon found the culprit (i guess their Google-fu was better than mine)

I’m in the process of building a 5x5x5 LED Cube like many others. The firmware is designed by [SiGNOUT] and [knielsen] from the local Hackerspace.

Their Cubes use a Seperate Arduino, and TLC5940 LED-drivers in TSOP housing. I would like to push the limits on my version of it, so i ordered the TLC5940 and Atmega328P in the smallest possible cases available. I would like to try BGA some day, but BGA requires more than dual layer PCB, so that’s impossible without professional PCB’s. The Atmel is 4mm² and the TLC5940 is 5mm².

The board is 2-layer and has holes through plated chemically. It is made on our Protomat & Minicontac II.

I am in the process of installing a Nexus 7 Tablet permanently in my Car – Using it for Navigation software and playing music.

I need to be able to tell the Nexus 7 to pause playback of music, and go to sleep. The easiest and most simple way is to touch a NFC tag to it, that tells it to do just this (Using a combination of NFC Task Launcher & Tasker)

But, how to enable the tag at will ?!

Solution: Put a CMOS switch in series with the antenna of the tag – this way it will only be readable when i tell it to!

A good solution is the 74HC4066 or even the DY411DY, but those are just too big an complicated. Why not resort to a single CMOS switch – Enter the 74LVC1G66.

A small SOT353 device that does it all, albeit a bit small for most soldering irons, but nothing my Weller WD1000M can’t handle.

I drew up a board in Eagle cad and milled a PCB. It didn’t work in the first try, it seems I damaged the RFID chip when removing it from the blob of glue inside the tag, so next chip i mounted sits on a big glob of glue, no need to risk damaging another chip!

I the second try, it works perfectly! – The chip needs a supply voltage of 3,3 or 5V and a logic high signal to trigger the Tag “ON”

Recently, i purchased a big lot of Philips ZM1000 Nixies, and needed a test PCB to test out if all was good – i got sockets for a number of the tubes, so i settled on making a PCB with the correct socket, so I easily can test them.

Being fond of the Arduino, i just thought, why not make it an Arduino shield – this way it’s a nice compact solution, powered by the USB-port, and no extra cables needed.

I earlier on aquired one of the real nice high voltage supplies, perfect for nixies from Taylor Electronics

So i made a single PCB that fits the small power supply module, a socket for a 74141 Nixie driver, and a socket for the ZM1000 tube.

I milled the PCB on our PCB milling machine in the local hackerspace where i frequent, Labitat

I did not mount all the headers on the finished PCB, since they are not in used. The use of stacking headers are a little waste, since there is no way I can mount anything on top of the Nixie PCB, but they make the PCB headers more mechanically stable, since they are soldered on on the bottom side of the PCB.

A small video of the circuit in operation, running a simple counting program, testing all digits: Youtube

Programming Arduino Mini’s and similar units with no on-board USB requires a USB/RS232 adaptor for the computer (unless you really have a RS232 port on your PC, then you need a MAX232 Level Translator)